


Antonovna

by wearethewitches



Series: Antonovna [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Rewrite, Developing Relationship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Natasha Romanov Feels, Natasha Romanov Has Issues, Parent Tony Stark, Parent-Child Relationship, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-02-26 18:27:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21872995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wearethewitches/pseuds/wearethewitches
Summary: “You look like your mother. Really,” Tony Stark gestures along her figure, eyes shifting up and down once before settling on her face again. “I’m serious. Same hair, face, eyes – heck, same body.”“Are you sure you want to continue?”(or, Natasha Romanov is Tony Stark's daughter - aka, the bullet-point fic, in fic format. Can be read standalone.)
Relationships: Natasha Romanov & Tony Stark
Series: Antonovna [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1575772
Comments: 9
Kudos: 65





	1. Chapter 1

“You look like your mother.”

Incredulity flows through her and fades just as fast: she will not take anything he says seriously.

“Really,” Tony Stark gestures along her figure, eyes shifting up and down once before settling on her face again. “I’m serious. Same hair, face, eyes – heck, same body.”

“Are you sure you want to continue?” She asks him smoothly, but Stark doesn’t blink.

The next words that exit his mouth open a can of worms Natasha is not prepared to eat.

“You’d be, what? Twenty-five? Twenty-five and a half, give or take a few weeks?” He twists, looking to Pepper Potts, missing how her eyes widen. “It’s May, right? I’m not that out of touch.”

“Yes, Tony,” Potts rolls her eyes, “it’s May. Now, give me your company.”

“On it, Potts, yeesh,” and he looks back at her, assessing her. Natasha feels the urge to throttle him, to pin him to the floor of the boxing ring and ask- no, _demand_ to know how he knows. Natalie Rushman’s birthday makes her out to be twenty-nine and her ‘birthday’? Made-up. Fake. SHIELD still has her date of birth listed as April 4th of ’82.

Not even Natasha knows exactly how old she is. But she knows one thing: she’s twenty five.

“I’m here on Ms Potts’ behalf,” Natasha replies, callous and cold. Stark purses his lips, then asks Harold Hogan to give her a lesson in boxing.

Ha.

Give _her_ a lesson in boxing.

Even Natalie Rushman knows how to fight, though that’s no excuse for Natasha to bring Hogan down like she does. It’s not calculated. It’s instinct, body and mind reacting to the padded fist she sees out of the corner of her eye without remorse. Keeping him down, though, using her signature move – that is anger and frustration, childish petulance creating self-doubt and a need to control the situation the best way she knows. How does Stark know her birthday? For a few blissful minutes, it’s personal.

Natasha wants to know if he really did ever meet her mother.

 _Get your head in the game, Romanov,_ she orders herself, when she regains clarity. In her head, she flips the situation, wondering if this means Stark does know about SHIELD after all – if he keeps tabs on ‘questionable’ decisions, of which she is one. This job, to watch Tony Stark and ascertain whether he will manage to save his own life, is priority – but if her cover is already blown, the situation will need an altogether different sort of handling.

“I need your impression.”

His eyebrow quirks and then, he profiles her. “Uh, you have a quiet reserve, an old soul-”

“I meant your fingerprint,” she interrupts before he gets going, smiling a little. Despite everything, Natasha finds it ironic.

That’s almost exactly what Phil said.

* * *

The laboratory of Anthony E. Stark is legendary, in some circles. It’s a place of invention, home to the Iron Man armours – and Tony Stark’s safe space. Virginia ‘Pepper’ Potts, Colonel James Rhodes and Harold ‘Happy’ Hogan are the only others with access and considering Obadiah Stane’s betrayal, Natasha doesn’t expect that to change any time soon – so, of course, she’s somewhat wary and faintly concerned when a memo comes through for her to visit, after hours.

Habit would suggest that Stark is asking her over for sex, his playboy years far from forgotten. Natasha could use that, maybe, but it isn’t in her interests – or SHIELD’s – for her to seduce him. There’s also the AI to consider, who would rat her out the moment she went snooping, _if_ she went snooping, that is.

Still. She replies to the memo with an affirmative, wearing her long black peacoat to ward off the chill of the evening as she approaches the Malibu mansion. The grandeur is understated, no ornamentation and a definite sense of minimalism, a light on in the main living area that somehow makes the darkened mansion look like a home. Natasha imagines what kind of person she might have thought lived there, as an exercise.

 _A rich man,_ she thinks, stepping inside. _With young children who he loves dearly and would like to spend more time with._

It’s hardly Tony Stark. But then again, another interpretation could be the lonesome playboy aching for more people he can trust, which suits Stark to a tee.

“ _Miss Rushman, if you would step downstairs,_ ” requests JARVIS – a first.

Natasha frowns, glancing around in search of a camera. “Excuse me? Who is that?”

“ _I am Mr Stark’s companion, an artificial intelligence of some power._ ” JARVIS states, before adding, “ _Though I have protocols against going ‘all Skynet’, as it were, do not worry._ ”

Skynet – that’s a _Terminator_ reference, Natasha knows. When Clint heard that Stark had an AI, he made her sit through them all with him and Laura over the weekend at the Farmhouse, when Lila and Cooper were asleep. Part of her wonders, for a moment, if SHIELD has underestimated Stark’s AI – especially if it’s making jokes.

“ _If you’ll meet with Sir downstairs, now, Miss Rushman,_ ” JARVIS chides her, prompting her to nod shortly and sweep through the open living room, down the spiral stairs to the workshop. The door unlocks as she approaches, a wall of sound dimming just as she steps inside.

“Ah, Natalie – can I call you Natalie?”

“Mr Stark,” Natasha greets.

Stark smothers a visible wince, spinning in his desk chair with a faked whimsy. His shoulders are tight – there’s tension there, without question. He motions her over.

“I wanted to show you something,” he says, vague as he swipes his hand through the open air. Above his desktop screens, a blue hologram appears out of nowhere, another movement causing a tiny box to expand into a rectangle – a picture.

Natasha shoots forwards, leaning against the desk, head twisted almost painfully so she can look at it straight-on.

“You know her, then?”

“It’s Madame B,” she mumbles, hardly able to believe what she’s seeing. Her instructor from the Red Room, in full colour, is walking steadily through the corridor of some kind of upper-class housing. Her hair is dark, the same vivid red as her own – Natasha had always suspected she dyed it brown, before going blonde, though the confirmation this late, so many years after…

She finds it strange, but fitting, that yes, after _so many years,_ she focuses on the hair.

“Huh,” Stark mutters, waving his fingers. The image turns into a video, showing her striding through the corridor, switching to another feed outside an open door. Natasha watches her mentor slow, leaning up against the door jamb in the classic lean of seduction, a syringe in her grasp refracting in the dark, hidden behind her back. _Abduction mission,_ Natasha guesses, eyes flickering to the timestamp in the corner.

_02:31:03 1984-04-12_

The video pauses as a shape from the other side of the door moves from shadow to light. Natasha recognises a young Tony Stark before the video rewinds to the best view of her.

“I don’t know what you know or who you are, really, but I don’t forget a face,” Stark tells her, staring at her. In his space hand, he’s playing with a bolt, silver and shiny like the syringe. He says her fake name quietly, desperately – “ _Natalie_.”

Her stomach revolts. Natasha clenches her fingers, grip on the desk tightening. “I don’t know what happened to her. She could still be alive, for all I know.”

“Where?”

“Anywhere,” she replies, before feeling a stirring of guilt. Belatedly, she adds, “Maybe Russia. Most likely, she transferred to the FSB or the SVR when the KGB was dismantled.”

“Russian spies? Holy shit.” Stark mutters to himself, asking, “JARVIS, are you getting this?”

“ _Yes, sir. I would also like to point out that this sort of information is not usually available to a ‘notary’._ ”

“It’s because I’m not a notary,” Natasha admits, looking Stark in the eye. “I haven’t had my cover broken this fast in years.”

“…shit,” Stark says, going for the nearest blunt object in his reach – a screwdriver, which isn’t that bad a weapon, if he can use it properly. He’d have to get out of the chair first, but, well…that’s not the problem, here. “Never in a million years would I think my daughter would turn out to be a Russian superspy – just saying.”

Natasha can see the machine gun turret lowering from the ceiling of the workshop. Frankly, she doesn’t care. Things are falling into place in her head and she knows, now, why Madame B would visit Tony Stark at the age of fourteen, how Stark knew her age in the first place – why he called her here tonight.

“You think I’m your daughter,” she states.

His grip on the screwdriver tightens. “Well, yeah. Only if you’re not going to kill me, though.”

“I won’t,” Natasha promises, stepping back and letting her hands rest together at her front. Her peacoat feels tight, her lungs expanding and contracting. _Daughter. Father._ “There’s a chance I’m not. They might have had other subjects.”

“I feel like we’re speaking different languages. Subjects? Christ. Were you a test tube baby?”

“I wouldn’t know,” she replies quietly. “Do you have other children?”

Stark seems uncomfortable. “If I do, none of _them_ have come forwards. I’ve had enough paternity suits to last me a lifetime.”

“On the chance that you were correct-” she starts, wanting to make something clear “-it wouldn’t be a basis for any sort of relationship.”

“And you wouldn’t get my company.”

“Ms Potts’ company, now.”

He rolls his eyes, still grasping the screwdriver – but leaning back in his chair, relaxing. “Glad that’s clear. So, ‘Natalie’, why are you spying on me?”

Natasha looks him up and down, seeing the metallic cross-stitch on his neck. Part of her wants to feel betrayed, all of a sudden. “You’re dying,” she says, bland and unappealing.

He barks out a laugh. “Right. Of course – and you’re here to what? Steal my last minutes of genius?”

“No, I’m here to monitor you and report back if things are unsatisfactory.”

“And are they?”

“You’re still dying,” she smiles thinly, “so, _yeah._ ”

“I’d better work on that, then.”


	2. Chapter 2

When Tony was less than a month shy of fourteen, a woman came into his house.

Not Stark Manor, but his brownstone. He’d been at MIT for less than a year and hadn’t managed to convince Howard to put him in the dorms, yet. The brownstone was full to the brim with cameras and other security measures, with a doorman, two full-time bodyguards and best of all: Ana Jarvis. The woman was the wife of Edwin Jarvis, his father’s butler and friend – aka, Tony’s stand-in father figure, most of the time.

While Jarvis would spend most of his time with Howard after Tony started MIT, Ana made the decision to come live with Tony and keep an eye on him. It made Tony feel fuzzy inside. Around the house, Hungarian was their first language and it was Tony’s favourite game to call her his mother, right before running out of the room back to his workshop.

That way, he never got to see her reaction – good or bad.

The early hours of April twelfth changed that game. Tony doesn’t remember much from after the drugs took effect, but he knows he was assaulted and that the woman didn’t give a shit about the cameras – she waved at three of them, on the way back out. Tony had staggered to Ana’s room and in the most pitiful mewl, called out for his _anya_.

His father used the excuse that his coursework needed reviewing, to better accommodate his genius. Tony got to come home and freak out for a couple of months with both Ana and Maria there to comfort him. He thinks his relationship with Maria was actually the strongest it ever had been, because of that incident.

Howard had gotten ‘his people’ on it. The normal police weren’t informed and despite how the tabloids didn’t find out – despite how Tony didn’t get treated any different for what happened – he still feels the sting of never having caught her. The woman haunted his nightmares for years, after and redheads? Well, no. Never again, not until Pepper.

“J, put the gun away.”

“ _Sir, I must insist-_ ”

“Away,” he repeats, twirling once in his chair. Tony looks away from ‘Natalie’ for a second and a half. She’s still stood there when he stops spinning. “What’s your real name? Do you have one?”

“I chose Natasha.”

_Natasha._

“Natasha,” he repeats, lip twitching. “Natasha what? Not Rushman.”

“…Romanov.” is her reply. Her fingers thrum against his desk and she doesn’t look at him. “Natalia Alianovna Romanova, before that. I changed it, when I defected.”

“Wow,” Tony drawls, heart pounding against the arc reactor. It aches, like always, but it’s not as soul-draining as the blood toxicity problem. _That_ is perpetual, a lethargy and a heaviness that he’d rather do without.

His kid defected from Russia. Rhodey is going to have a heart-attack, if Tony ever gets around to telling him.

“Wouldn’t it be Antonovna?” He asks, unable to help it. “My name’s Anthony, _so_ …”

She glances his way. It’s a warning look. Tony has to remember that he can’t push. Isn’t that what they all say about adult kids? Let them make the decisions? It’s not like they’re estranged, but they’re certainly not friendly.

“Is there anything else, Mr Stark?”

“Ouch,” Tony puts a hand to his chest, “my own kid, calling me ‘Mr Stark’.”

“I’m currently an employee of Stark Industries – it wouldn’t be professional. I also _won’t_ call you anything else,” says Natasha, voice cold. Something in his chest withers at her frostiness. Their eyes meet. “If that’s all, I’ll be going. Expect my DNA sample by courier. A forwarding address for your own will accompany it.”

“Oh – okay, then,” Tony blinks, oddly hurt. He turns in his chair, trying not to show it. A last-second idea pops into his head and he asks without looking. “Want to come to Monaco as my assistant?”

It surprises him to hear her _I’ll be there,_ but she’s already turned around to power-walk towards the door of his workshop. Her shoulders are shaking and the baseline pulse JARVIS has for her on-screen is rapid.

“Natasha,” he repeats to himself, quiet and almost longing. She’s right: he is dying. So he shouldn’t _long_ – he shouldn’t have told her in the first place. It’s not fair that she has to deal with all his shit on top of the realisation that they’re blood.

Tony barks out a laugh.

Nothing is ever fair for the Stark’s.

* * *

In Monaco, he wraps his arm around her waist like he would any other for pictures, but Tony makes sure not to look places he shouldn’t and notices when Hammer’s eyes fall on her, instead. It makes something in his gut curl, a neophyte reaction that Tony immediately understands comes from surprise fatherhood; he’s already feeling a surge of Overprotective Dad for this woman of his blood.

Tony didn’t feel old before finding out he had a kid. He felt _middle-aged_ , but not old, certainly. Now, he feels it. Tony has a twenty-five year old daughter and it hits him hard – hard enough that he double-thinks replacing the Stark Industries-promoted racer. He watches the Grand Prix from a table, Pepper on one side and…and _Natasha_ on the other, the big screen raised high for everyone in the posh dining room to see.

“You’re quiet,” says Pepper. “Oh and I got a notification about a delivery to the mansion.”

“Jarvis got it,” Tony replies, knowing exactly what ‘delivery’ Pepper is talking about. He chances a look at Natasha and finds her watching a nearby screen in very well faked interest. Maybe the conversation would have continued – he hears Pepper start to ask what the delivery was, in curiosity – but outside the window, where the racers are starting to rush by, he sees a man walk out onto the track.

It’s the beginning of a very expensive day.

On camera for the world to see, he uses some kind of arc-powered set of electric whips to slash the engines off three sports cars, causing them to go flying into the air – into other cars, into the stands, into the road. Tony flinches at every crash, heart pounding as he thinks about the families of the drivers and all the people screaming in the exploding sidelines.

“TONY STARK!” The man calls, grinning with metal teeth into the cameras. “I KNOW YOU ARE HERE, STARK! FACE ME! SEE THE POWER WE SHARE!”

“Boss.” And then Happy is there, the portable suit manacled to his wrist. Tony’s hands shake as he unlocks it, a small amount of space forming around them as he places the suitcase on the ground, foot slamming into the socket.

“Move out of the way!” He calls to the people on the balcony, the suit growing up around his leg, torso, hand – everything. Natasha, ever the helpful spy, assists in that regard and she’s the last one he sees before the headpiece slams down and he’s walking out, repulsors firing.

Tony learns later that the man was called _Ivan Vanko_ and that the arc-reactor technology came from his father’s blueprints, Howard’s old work partner before he was deported back east for espionage. Throughout the whole mess that follows his defeat of Vanko in Monaco, Natasha is there – and by god, if Tony isn’t terrified when he finally gets confirmation she’s his daughter.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” she warns him. “I have my own life. I’m not looking to be a part of yours.”

“…why?” Tony can’t help but ask, still tasting coconut on the back of his tongue. He feels dizzy. Oh well – probably just a concussion he’s forgotten about. He leans back in the abandoned spinny chair, careful to keep his eye on Natasha, not sure whether or not she’ll disappear when he isn’t watching. “I can understand not wanting to be publicly acknowledged, I get that – but I’d like to know you. It’s late in the day for me to be your dad-”

She interrupts him. “I don’t want or need a father. But you’ve been invited for Christmas,” she says, like that isn’t a complete one-eighty to her opinion.

“What?” Tony blinks, “Wait, you do Christmas? Are you religious? Who invited me?”

Natasha struggles to answer him. He sees it on her face, the way her jaw clenches and how she twitches, as if fighting the urge to leave. Eventually, she answers, “A colleague. Close. He was the one to turn me around, to offer a place for me in SHIELD. He’s held on, since and his wife ordered me to invite you for the Christmas holidays. No, I’m not religious – and if I were, I wouldn’t pick Christianity.”

“Hell to the yeah, Christianity is weird,” says Tony, mouth moving without any input from his brain. “I was raised Jewish. Howard and Maria weren’t around much, so their butler and his wife got to raise me, tell me right from wrong, explain why I’m getting presents for Christmas from my parents and not from them. All that.”

A strange expression filters across her face. “I didn’t know that about you.”

“Don’t believe all the tabloids.” Tony smiles tiredly, grabbing for a nearby pen and paper. He writes down a series of notes – codes, bank details, addresses – before handing it over to her. “Those access codes will get you into any Stark property that isn’t SI-oriented. Some bank accounts you can raid, if you like. Buy something nice for yourself.”

“…alright,” Natasha agrees warily, tucking the paper into one of her many utility pockets before standing. “I have to go. I’ll see you again.”

He can’t help it. “Promise?” He feels like he’s taken a step too far, like he’s going to fall off the edge of a glacier as she looks at him with cold eyes.

Natasha doesn’t answer him before walking away.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know if I'll continue this forever, but a few chapters will go up and if you want to know the rest, you can read the bullet-point version of this - 'Simple', which is linked in the series bit. Might also do some oneshots of other POV's, like the Maximoff's, Darcy Lewis, the Defenders...you get me? Maybe's, not positives, but like, I _did_ plan it out already.


End file.
